


carving out our names

by agenderleadingplayer



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Oneshot, cancer arc flashbacks, cw blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8604361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenderleadingplayer/pseuds/agenderleadingplayer
Summary: it starts with a nosebleed and it ends with a song and that's all it is really: the two of them and a moment and also maybe some wet paper towels.





	

**_2000, maybe_ **

her nose is bleeding.

he does not say anything to her because he is sure, at this point, that she knows what this feels like, knows what happens when these sort of things come to pass but she does not move. he does not know if she knows so he says, do you need a tissue, without taking his eyes too much off the road.

“a what? oh. oh, my god…” and she lets out a half-laugh but her voice breaks and he does not look at her. need a tissue, he repeats, and she asks, “do you have any?” pointedly, like she’s almost mad at him.

and she’s right, he doesn’t. look in the glove compartment, he’d suggested, but there hadn’t been any, he’d stopped carrying them around since…

since the bleeding stopped being normal. since the crying and the cold and things stopped being normal. they’re just driving and neither of them are worried that she’s going to get eaten alive anymore.

so she holds her hand under her nose to catch the blood and looks down (don’t look up, that’s a lie they’ll tell you; look up and the blood drains back into your brain. looking up is dangerous) and they do not talk. he pulls into the motel parking lot ten minutes later, everything mostly having dried up. her hand and the latter half of her face are both caked in red and he’s worried,  but she keeps saying “no, i’m fine, don’t look at me like that i’m fine, i promise” – he holds her clean hand anyway, asks the receptionist for some paper towels or something. she covers her face, does not want to make a scene. they rent two rooms but he does not go into his, instead sits on the edge of her bed and cleans her up.

“it’s cold,” she says, of the paper towels, and he smiles a little bit at that. he cleans off what he can and brushes her hair out of her face and he sees her smile, if only for a moment, so this is good. this is enough.

“you okay?” she nods. “good.” they sit in silence and he does not know what to say. instead he grabs her hand and hopes she knows what he means.

she says, you can stay if you’d like, and he is reminded of all of the years before this, of the bleeding and the crying and the medical talk and the hospitals (so many goddamn hospitals, too many goddamn hospitals) where he’d stay with her, make sure she didn’t freeze to death or anything. she says you can stay if you’d like and he knows that what she means is don’t leave me here.

he nods and takes a seat in the red patchwork chair at the foot of her bed and looks away while she changes, takes off his shoes and tries not to think too much.

“are you gonna sleep there?” she is brushing her teeth and the words come out muddled: awe yo gonna fwee veil.

“um. yes?” he does not know which would be the right thing to say.

she finishes brushing her teeth and comes out of the bathroom and says, you don't have to. he's not sure if she means go back to his room or not, and he does not want to ask so he stays sitting awkwardly in the surprisingly uncomfortable armchair.

he realizes that she is wearing a bathrobe, that this display of unhesitant domesticity is rare for them: all the teeth-brushing and the pajama-wearing and the you-don't-have-to-sleep-alone-tonight type things.

he also realizes that it is only because she had been bleeding less than an hour ago; only because they had both flashed back to memories of hospital gowns and late-night phone calls and times when they talked about death and dying like it was their unpleasant next-door neighbor that was coming over for tea soon, very soon.

more than anything, over those months all those years ago, he had not wanted her to die. he had not wanted her to go, to leave him, and when he thought that that was maybe what she was going to do (much sooner than either of them had hoped or expected) he hadn't known how to react; he'd cried against doorframes and at the side of her bed when she was still asleep (because she’d slept a lot then, oftentimes drifting in and out of consciousness on those days when he saw her) and he'd prayed to a great big something and he'd gotten lost in his own mind.

and she had not known that, he realizes, the conclusion washing over him too much too soon. he is looking at her in the artificial motel light and she is beautiful, and she does not know how many times he has cried over her.

she says, “are you okay?” because he hasn’t said anything in a while (and it’s funny, funny because half an hour ago he’d been worried sick for her, worried sick that something had happened, something had come back and was eating her again even though he knows it’s not, probably).

“mmm,” is all he says, and he remembers that he is going to be sleeping in this room with her tonight and he does not want to breathe or say anything to mess it up so he looks at his shoes.

“why don’t you get some sleep?” and he loves her.

so he tries to position himself as comfortably in the chair as he can, kicks off his shoes and closes his eyes. he does not hear her move.

“i didn’t mean…”

“what?”

“i just…” he hears her take a breath. “isn’t that uncomfortable?”

he opens his eyes. “it’s fine, really. i mean, i know you asked me to stay, so –”

“but not like…” she is not talking like herself. he is worried and wants to hold her hand but she is halfway across the room from him and it feels like the berlin wall. “i mean, not like that…”

he doesn’t want to say it, or to ask it, because what if he’s wrong, so he stays and looks at her, still in her bathrobe (she is not wearing shoes. he can count on one hand the number of times he has seen her without shoes.) and blinks a couple times. it does not seem that she wants to say it either so they stare at each other breathing until she sits down on the bed.

he sits down next to her, because what else is he supposed to do, and tries to change the subject.

“is your...nose feeling better?” she is close enough so that he can hold her hand now, so he does, and he does not move in case she decides that that is not something she wants to do right now. “i mean, has the bleeding...stopped? is it...are you okay?”

“yeah.” she looks down at their hands and doesn’t say anything and breathes. “you didn’t have to stay if you didn’t want to, i didn’t want to assume…”

“well, you know what they say about what you do when you assume things.”

and she looks at him. “actually, i don’t.”

“you make an ass out of you and me.”

and she laughs, really, and does not let go of his hand. “that’s good. i like that.”

“no, you don’t.” and she laughs again.

he does not have anything else to say so they sit and breathe for a while again until she says, “if you’d like you can leave. or, i mean, stay, if…”

“no, it’s okay, i’ll…” and he motions toward the armchair.

“that’s not what i…” she is frustrated and he does not know why.

and that is when she starts bleeding again.

“shit…” he does not remember who had said it. maybe they both had, at the same time. he is running to the bathroom and she is cursing to herself and he grabs an entire roll of toilet paper (1-ply, scratchy. uncomfortable). her hand is back under her nose and he sits next to her, helps her out, fills the cup next to the sink with water and asks if she needs it, to drink or to clean, and she says yes, thank you and keeps looking down, does not look at him (dangerous).

he keeps touching her (he can't stop touching her) and he cleans up everything that's spilled, mostly, and he waits until the blood stops spilling all the way and says are you okay again and it's almost like he's praying, are you there god? he doesn't know the rest.

but she says she's fine (though he does not know if she is) and so he throws away the dirty paper and brushes her hair out of her face again. her bathrobe is stained and he thinks that might mean something. he sits back down on the bed and touches her, softly on her cheek and she laughs a little bit, exhales very fast out of her nose and half-smiles.

“does it happen often? the...bleeding.” and he asks it like he's scared because he is, because the big bad monster under their (her. her) bed might be crawling back out again and that's not good not good.

“it hadn't before now,” she says, as if to reassure him, but it doesn't really sound like she believes it all the way.

“that's good,” he says, and he does not look at her.

he thinks about the medical textbook she'd had to study, however many pages it was, and how she must have seen nosebleeds as a symptom for thousands of things, and how she'd passed all her tests and rewritten einstein. he thinks about her bleeding all over herself those years ago and he wonders if she was scared. he wonders if she could feel him crying for her.

he gets up.

he says, “i’ll turn the light off.” it is eleven thirty and she is not bleeding, at least not anymore, and he is scared and he does not know why and he wants to touch her but he doesn't. he says, i’ll turn the light off and he doesn't really know what he means but there are tears that are stinging him right behind his eyes and he says i’ll turn the light off and he does and he leaves.  

the door to his room swings shut (creaky) behind him and he sits down on his bed and puts his head in his hands and cries for maybe half a second and then feels the crushing guilt of it all settle – she’d asked him to stay and he'd said he would and he didn't. he turned the light off and left and did not touch her because he was scared.

he half expects her to come knocking on his door moments later, say something like what happened back there mulder? with a slight tilt of her head, raise of her eyebrow. he thinks he might kiss her if she were to do that. he thinks he might put his hand on her hip and pull her close and do all of the things you're not supposed to do when you wear badges and live in the basement.

but she doesn't do that, doesn't knock, doesn't follow him. she sleeps, probably, because it is late, kind of. she sleeps and so does he, barely. he wakes up and tosses and turns and thinks about doing something, calling her maybe. he doesn't. he'd turned the light off and that was that.

the sun rises, because that is what the sun does, at around six, and he wakes up to birds that he had not known were there. he is in the middle of america chasing after something that does not want to be chased and it is like always, and he feels almost like a member of the scooby gang but not quite, not all the way.

he knocks on her door at seven thirty and tries to pretend like the previous night had not happened. he is still worried about her nose and he wants to ask her about it but she opens the door and she does not seem fazed, or scared, and she does not look like she did when she was dying, so he thinks she is probably okay.

they drive for hours and arrive at a house that looks like it could be anybody’s house, and they talk to a family that could be anybody’s family, and it is nice and they get no answers. they eat lunch in a cheap diner and talk about nothing (or, talk about the case, so, in essence, talk about nothing) and she has to go back to the motel to research something and so he goes with her.

and she finds the clue she'd needed and she solves the mystery and the monster is not real and it's open and shut – barely any running this time, either. they are due back in dc in a week. they have pages of a report to write and miles of nothingness to explore. her nose has not bled since. he is still worried, but maybe not about that.

but the point is, if he's even looking for a point (which he isn't sure he is), they have a week to do nothing, to drive and to eat and to talk and to bleed, maybe.

and he is sitting on his bed one night and his mind wanders to a warehouse, how she'd died there and how he hadn't known what to do. she'd died three years after he’d met her and he hadn't known what to do. he thinks of all of the deaths, all the ghosts, all the things slowly eating the two of them alive. and he thinks of the night less than a week ago with the patchwork chair and the hand-holding and the almost-tears, and he thinks about how he'd touched her soft right by her cheek and almost kissed her.

and so, in the end, he gets up and knocks on her door and she is in pajamas, looking up at him like it is always like this, separate motel rooms and conversations that do not go anywhere.

he says, hello.

she does not say anything for a while, just sort of looks at him and then says, what's up mulder. like she's worried. like she's been thinking about the patchwork chair. maybe she'd sat in it when she solved the case. he wonders what she'd felt.

“i was just thinking…” even though that wasn't what he had been doing; he had just been letting his mind run everywhere but thinking is not what that is, “has there been any more...bleeding?”

“no, mulder, i’m fine.” and he almost believes her.

“do you know what might have caused it?” he still has not crossed the threshold to her room. he is like a vampire, he thinks. add some drugged pizza and an apparently-attractive sheriff and he'd feel right at home.

“the air is dry here,” is all she says. “sometimes that will irritate it.”

“so it's not…”

“no.”

he looks at the ground and tries not to think about her dying, tries not to think of the ghosts. he is scared again, and he remembers how he'd cried over her while she had been asleep in a hospital bed, put his hand on hers and sobbed and not woken her, somehow, and how she still doesn't know.

he steps into her room and it is like he is affirming something, and he touches her hip and says “you sure you're okay scully.” and she says, yes.

he kisses her and it is slow and he tries to remember it. and it is like the ghosts stop for a second, maybe: all it is is the two of them not-bleeding in a motel room with the door wide open; what is the opposite of bleeding, he thinks, after he pulls away and strokes her face and keeps his hand on her hip, presses his lips to her forehead and smiles all the way almost. and the answer is being alive, maybe, or keeping everything where it is supposed to be, maybe, or taking all of the things you've lost and putting them back inside of you and kissing someone while you both breathe in the middle of nowhere. it's not a happy ending but it's an end.

so the blood stays put and they drive back to dc and he lets himself touch her. he buys a pack of tissues, just in case, and flips radio stations and so they listen to static sometimes, the waves of snow buzzing rhythmically through the speakers; she says, i’d meant sleep next to me.

“what?” they are something like two hours away by now.

“when i asked you to stay that first night? that's what i meant.”

“oh.” then, “i thought that might be it but i didn't want to ask.”

“yeah.”

“yeah.”

the static fades and a new song starts, soft: “what's this,” she asks.

and the line is, “in between the moon and you angels get a better view” and it's true, kind of, and he tells her so. and she laughs and says, you don't know what you're saying mulder, and it's true because he doesn't.

so he says, “no, scully, i don't.” and he taps the steering wheel and hums a little bit and she joins him and neither of them bleed. everything is back where it's supposed to be. they are breathing in a car and the blood is inside of them. pumping, he thinks. alive.

**Author's Note:**

> titled after the counting crows song "round here" (which is also referenced in the text at the end)
> 
> please leave a comment if you'd like!! 
> 
> and if you want to you can check me out on tumblr @quxnce!


End file.
